Keyboard mapping a font?

[mwenz]

I believe TT exports as version 8 EPS, Xara imports/exports as version 8 iirc. It's a good match. Download and or open the PDF manual for TT and do a search for EPS. There are options in TT for setting the action it does upon importing (the default is what I use). Main info is on page 250 of the PDF.

As for which character to begin with? Nah, just do them as the art guy is producing them.

Take care, Mike

[Gare]

Hi Staggers—

Q1 A1 (Knight takes pawn): What I usually do is draw all the characters on a page in Xara, at a height of about 650 to 700 pixels, and then set a grid in the font creation software of 1000 units, which gives headroom for accented characters and just a tinch of built-in leading (interline spacing). Somewhere around here in this area I uploaded a template, skip it, I'll attach one here now.





This is a guide only. Many, many typefaces have different cap heights and x-heights and such. It's just a decent guide for beginners.

Short answer: no. begin drawing with any character you like. I stagger my work between hard and easy glyphs.

Q2: There is an ambiguity about the content in an EPS file, staggers. Make sure these are Illustrator compatible exports and that they contain only on path (joined subpaths are legit), the path has less than 200 control points (more of a suggestion than a rule), that there is absolutely nothing else on the page you export than a single character (Encapsulated Post Script is a page description language and it wants to describe all elements on your page), and that there are no bitmaps on the page your person exports.

EPS is not AI as far as file formats go. EPS can contain both bitmap and vector information, and early versions of the Illustrator file format were based on EPS, which is sort of a printing specification, a container, rather than a description of vector drawings. If your glyph-designing person has the chance to export to myfile.AI or myfile.EPS, choose Illustrator *.ai, as Xara offers. Because it's less prone to trip you or whomever up in the Type Tool's import process.



My Best,

gary

[staggers]

Thanks very much for all that.

Slightly to my own surprise I find I'm actually looking forward to all this.

And yesterday I also upgraded to WD MX Premium, so I have a lot to do, but as I say, I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks again all of you for your help.

Regards

Staggers.

[Gare]

Before anyone goes any farther with Type Tool, please read this concerning something called The Winding Path Rule, and save yourself some aggravation!


The Winding Path Rule states that the fill to a closed curve must go to the right of the outline. A character that has a hole in it, like the letter "O", has to have that path going in the opposite direction as the outer path. When you draw characters, pay attention to the direction of the curve. Xara DP and CorelDraw don't care about this rule, but Microsoft Expression Graphic Designer (formerly Expression) and Adobe Illustrator both offer path direction tools for "compound paths". And Xara can reverse paths, too, although you can draw correct joined shapes usually without the need to correct anything later. Use a node or path selection tool in combination with the reverse curve direction feature if you have paths going in the wrong way.



What happens if characters have paths going in the wrong direction? Most of the time, nothing, but 3D applications such as XARA 3D are very sensitive to path direction. Keep those directions going the proper way in your fonts, and you will be able to sell them for more money!

Right-click over a node in the glyph window in Type Tool and FontLab if the preview has a "counter" in it that looks filled in. Choose "Reverse Contour" and life (and typography) is good.

-g-

[angelize]

I have a question regarding Type tool 3 I am still playing around with the demo, but I am wondering if it has an option to let you set what restrictions you do or do not want, such as if you want to allow embedding

[Gare]

I just ran the demo, and then brought an exported typeface into FontLab.

It tells me that it is: Only Previewing and Printing is allowed (read only), which means you can send it out to the web via WD MX if this is what you're asking, but the demo is so crippled I would only do this with a registered copy Frances. The exports have "FontLab", "FL" violations in the center of the glyphs.

-g-

[mwenz]

Frances,

I do not believe that TT has any options to set restrictions. Therefore, the font can be pretty much used for anything (usual caveats) like most every one of my installed fonts.

Take care, Mike

[Gare]

On that note, how does the average person tell what restrictions are coded into a typeface?

I realize that none of the tg members are average, but seriously: FontLab can reassign permissions and tells you the current restrictions on any font one loads, but that sort of begs you getting FontLab.

And I'm not sure the test I ran will hold up if you buy the commercial copy. Mike, is there a page like this is the commercial version or not?



BTW, nice, clean avatar, Mike! I like the warm and cold muted colors workin' with and against each other.

-g

[mwenz]

Hi Gary--not that I can find. And the PDF help file does not shed much light other than to discuss formats that allow/disallow embedding restrictions, etc.

Windows Explorer shows relevant information:



MainType (and likely other font managers) show embeddable status.

Here's the relevant (and only) screen from TT for font parameters:



Take care, Mike
(thanks)

[angelize]

Hi guys, thanks for your responses, I was wondering about being able to embed a font created with TT in a website created with WDMX.